Dropcam

Hardware reaching their end of life is a natural occurrence, especially in mobile and smart devices that seem to have at the very least only 2 years to live. More often than not, owners are left with no choice but to upgrade, which usually entails cashing out on a new device. That is why Dropcam's new offer is like a breath of fresh air. It will be giving a free hardware replacement to owners of the original Dropcam and Dropcam Echo, even going as far as allowing owners to keep their old units, just as a remembrance.

Recently, Nest announced support for several new products, among them being Dropcam, the company it acquired not too long ago. Following this is an update to Dropcam's app that adds support for Nest's products, as well as some other small changes and bug fixes.

At this year's CEDIA expo, Nest has announced support for a bunch of new products, Dropcam among them. This expands the number of products the company's Nest Learning Thermostats and Nest Protect smoke detectors can work with, further increasing the connectivity found inside one's home.

While we might drool over technology and gadgets that make us into virtual cyborgs or commanders of an army of flying robots, privacy advocates are more concerned about the potential risks and violations that could happen. Enter Unplug, a hand-sized gadget that may not be able to completely keep out Glass users and drones from your home or business establishment but will at least keep them off your Internet network and hinder them from uploading and spreading their spy shots.

As go home security cameras, so goes the Dropcam. The very cool, Google-owned company put everyone on notice with their snazzy camera, meant for home security, but good for a variety of use cases. A new challenger, Simplicam, wants to unseat them from their throne atop the consumer security cam heap. Offering a bit more technical savvy than the Dropcam, Simplicam may end up the home security camera you should be considering instead of others it competes with. Is Simplicam as good as advertised, though? We put it through its paces to find out.

"Motion near upstairs," the notification says. That's upstairs in my apartment, the place I was around 2,800 miles away from; on the other side of the country from, in fact. It's Saturday morning, I'm away for the weekend, and SmartThings is being terribly helpful in notifying me that one of its motion detectors has spotted something unusual. That's when I start to panic.

Connected homes are fast becoming the new normal, with platforms like Wink coming to the mainstream. Through it all, one thing remains a point of concern for potential customers: home security. A typically expensive proposition, home security is fast becoming more cost-effective for the average consumer. How cheap is it, really, though? We take a look at a few products to find out.

You want a connected home, but what about the expense involved? Quirky’s Wink Hub makes having a connected home a pretty streamlined endeavor, serving as a base platform for all your connected devices. The hub itself is low-cost and readily available, but what about the devices that link to it? Here are five that we really like for starting your connected home project.

Google-owned Nest's acquisition of security camera company Dropcam may have left privacy advocates worrying again at the search giant's potential intrusiveness, but the company doesn't need a webcam on your wall to tell advertisers what's going on in your home. A new update to Google's AdWords platform is promising the ability to filter potential advert viewers by Parental Status, a valuable insight into demographics.

Late last month, rumor began circling that Google's Nest was eyeing a possible Dropcam acquisition, something that turned out to be true. On its website today, Nest announced that after "a lot of time looking" at different possibilities, the company has decided to acquire connectd-camera maker Dropcam.